Clearly, We Have Entered the New Century.

First of all, Americans elected their first African-American president tonight.

Second, this election appears to be emblematic of a sea change in American political culture; and many argue this will be a turning point in America's relationship with the rest of the world.

Third, we can now have commentary delivered to us via hologram:



Hat tip to Drudge.

What do you know?

Friday Star Trek Blogging

It seems that Obama has captured the Trekkie vote. A Google search turned up no similar group for McCain.

Friday Star Trek Blogging

Sarah Palin can't pronounce nuclear. There's been a funny exchange at Duck of Minerva and some follow-ups about whether this should matter and why.

I say, if Chekov can pronounce "nuclear," then come on, people.

The Candidates Speak

As of 9:30 pm Tuesday night, John McCain has convinced me I'm "not a rifle shot," and turns out Obama believes that a good number of us "may remember the events of 9/11." How inspiring, our leaders' faith in us.

It's great to see the responsibility to protect foreign civilians back on the US foreign policy agenda. McCain dodged the question with a bunch of references to Iraq, which as Obama correctly points out is the biggest reason why the US is too overstretched to protect civilians in Darfur. Obama's response is about the importance of soft power: "There's a lot of cruelty around the world. We won't be able to be everywhere all the time. That's why it's so important for us to be able to work in concert with our allies."

10:11: Obama definitely wants to "kill bin Laden."

10:13: McCain takes over the role of moderating from Tom Brokaw, who doesn't seem to know what moderating means.

Worst question of the night: Is Russia under Putin the evil empire?
Best question of the night: What don't you know and how will you find it out?

Soft Power and the US Elections

Check this out: the majority of respondents in every country in a recent BBC poll say that their respect for Americans would increase if we elect Obama rather than McCain this Fall.

Perhaps this has something to do with the fact that McCain not only can't tell the difference between Sunni and Shia, but apparently thinks Spain is a country in Latin America.



If Americans put this guy in office after eight years of Bush, who can blame the rest of the world for associating us with the policies of our government?

How to Pick a VP

A lot of people are asking what the heck John McCain was thinking when he nominated Sarah Palin, the youngest governor ever of a state not even connected to the US mainland, someone who admits to smoking pot, who will certainly alienate rather than attract Hilary supporters, and whose best qualification for being Commander in Chief should McCain keel over is her ability to hunt moose.

JedReport has an answer. HT to Daily Kos.

One of the Best Reasons to Elect Obama

Mark Levine has an op-ed at Al-Jazeera entitled "Obama's Other Muslim Problem" in which he argues:

"As soon as Barack Obama rose to the top of the field of Democratic presidential contenders, he developed a "Muslim problem" based on false accusations that he is, or once was, a Muslim. But... a far more serious Muslim problem awaits "President" Obama: A majority of the world's 1.4 billion Muslims have an utter lack of trust in the US.

Senator Obama's experience of living in a Muslim country (Indonesia, where he attended school during his childhood), along with his relative youthfulness and message of hope, have the potential to heal this rift, however.

He has the merits which can energise young Muslims in the same way he has inspired millions of young Americans."

Worth reading.

It Starts.

I was wondering how long it might take for Barack Obama's principled approach to politics to begin giving way to the pragmatics required to win again John McCain, much less exercise effective leadership in Washington. Looks like it's happening already: CNN has reported that women wearing headscarves were prevented from sitting near Obama at a rally, in order to combat the perception that he is Muslim.

Although "Presidential campaigns routinely invite audience members they believe will enhance the image their candidate wants to convey on TV to stand behind the candidate at rallies," the practice does run counter to Obama's message of unity and diversity.

The campaign has admitted as much and apologized for the incident, saying such actions are "not the policy of the campaign... It is offensive and counter to Obama's commitment to bring Americans together and simply not the kind of campaign we run. We sincerely apologize for this behavior."

My Thoughts on Gender Politics and the US Election

US voters, pundits and Hillary Clinton herself are simmering about whether sexism has affected her chances of winning the democratic nomination. Yes, it certainly has. But I think the picture is more complicated than the general media story. On the one hand, nearly every Hillary supporter I know boils down their position to "it's time for a woman to have a chance." (Of course, that's a small-N, unrepresentative sample. But let's face it, sexism - or the desire to move beyond it - can work to a woman's advantage.)

And of those who are voting against Hilary in the primary because she's a woman, only a small minority, I warrant, will be doing it out of pure sexism. Here are two other ways that gender tips the balance in the absence of overt sexism:

1) Democrats want an electable candidate. Democrats who may themselves not be sexist but who put electability above political correctness would not choose a woman over a black man, for purely tactical reasons. After all, black men have broken every formal glass ceiling in the US long before white women. They had the right to vote 52 years earlier. They were allowed to serve in the military earlier. They were allowed into higher education earlier. If you had to choose between putting a black man or a white woman up against an old, white guy in a Presidential election and you cared about your party's win, you'd nominate the black guy. In other words, taking the reality of sexism into account in a primary season mitigates against nominating a woman to run against a man, regardless of whether you're personally sexist.

2) Democrats and Republicans both want a change candidate. There is no other way to explain McCain's nomination or Obama's wild popularity. Because Clinton has been perceived as a status quo candidate for supporting the war in Iraq, she could no more have won the general election than she will win the nomination. So why wasn't the first viable female Presidential candidate a candidate for change? Again, because of gender politics. Women in leadership roles, especially those breaking glass ceilings, typically cannot afford to situate themselves too far to the feminized left of the political spectrum. Particularly in a hyper-masculinized political culture like the U.S., where military service is equated with leadership, Clinton's best strategy was to play up her foreign policy experience, national security credentials, and hawkishness. This would have worked brilliantly at many other historical moments. But not when the country is ready to end an unpopular war, reassess its foreign policy, and send a strong message to the world that they are shuffling off the Bush Administration's mortal coil. Gender politics, in short, had Hillary between a rock and a hard place. In this sense, because it would have been impossible for her to govern well even if somehow she were elected, and since future women's electoral chances hinge in many respects on her performance, it's probably a good thing for women that she won't take office.

This is true in another sense as well. If I had to guess, our first female President will not be a Democrat. And this will ultimately give the lie to those who assume that electing a female is equivalent to feminist politics. Don't forget, it was a female minister in Rwanda who orchestrated the mass rape of Tutsi women during the genocide. If you want to overcome a sexist society, a candidate's gender politics should be more important than his or her biological sex. To read about feminists for Obama click here and here.

Climate Change Redux

So a former student of mine wasn't too pleased with my take on climate change and the US elections. After some back and forth, he's convinced me to rethink / refine my original, fairly flippant argument to that effect.

My original argument (OK, more of an off-the-cuff assertion validated by a Comedy Central clip than an argument) hinged on two claims: 1) US voters care more about climate change than they did previously, and this concern cuts across the red/blue divide and 2) Obama is speaking to this constituency better than McCain.

Here is evidence to back that up. A PIPA poll in 2006 showed an emerging bipartisan consensus around addressing climate change, among other issues. And regarding McCain's climate platform v. Obama, see, among other things, this post by Matthew Yglesias.

My former student / now friend and colleague's best critique of my argument isn't actually based on refuting either of these claims. It is the following: that even if that's true, climate change will be eclipsed in the November election by other concerns that voters care more about, and that do not cut across the red/blue divide. He supports this claim with the following polling data from last February, showing "the environment" only 13th on a list of issues that voters consider "extremely important." Still, I could say that the fact it's on the list at all is suggestive. And it does show that 27% of the country thinks of it this way. The question is whether these are voters who would swing Democrat over this issue alone.

Problem with Gallup polls is they don't seem to do iterated polls asking the same questions. The actual rebuttal to my claim is not, where was climate change four months ago, it is, in what direction is it trending? And is the red/blue gap shrinking on this issue or not? Unfortunately, neither Gallup nor Pew nor PIPA can tell me whether or not I can prove my friend wrong.

Can any of you? I'm willing to be convinced.

Hitler and the US Election

I put this video up yesterday because it made me laugh, but then I poked around on YouTube videos that were linked to it, so I thought I'd expand the post.



Apparently, Hillary just acts like Hitler in parody (that is, no one thinks the video above is anything but a joke, but Obama's polices (like nuclear disarmament and health care)are actually equivalent to Hitler:



Though, since the person who created this video clearly cannot spell, s/he can be excused I suppose for not seeming to understand what Hitler actually did. (What with our President setting such a shoddy example both on grammar and on historical analogies of late, who can blame the average citizen?)

Ann Coulter has made more direct claims in recent weeks. In April, she asserted that Barack Obama is "a racist" based on her reading of his autobiography, "Dreams o My Father," which expresses anger at racism, and which she compares to Mein Kampf.

Then there was the brou-ha in February over Tom Sullivan's remarks in response to a caller to his right-wing radio show, who said that Obama's speaking style seemed reminiscent of Hitler:

"I understand that Hitler is hated by, and should be, by most everybody in civilized society. ... But the point being, you must remember something. Adolf Hitler was able to gather a country of people and get them excited about whatever it was that he was talking to them about. He was a very fiery, enigmatic -- I'm not sure -- I mean, he was -- I mean, he really got the people all thrilled..."

I can see why this rankles, but frankly I was more troubled by Keith Olberman's response - he criticized Sullivan for making even the slightest comparison between Obama and Hitler:



But they are comparable in some ways, aren't they? Both human beings. Both mortal. Both male human beings, or Pete's sake - feminist theorists argue this along can explain a little. Both working their way into political inluence against a background of hardship. And yes, both eloquent public speakers who excite an response from their audience through the use of redundance and emotive cliches. I'm willing to say it, as someone who will be pleased to support Obama in November's election, and I think it's silly for left-wing pundits to be so scared by the comparison on these completely irrelevant criteria. Obama is a gifted orator who makes many people share his vision, and that is not a curse, it is what will enable him to exercise leadership and unite the country in precisely the way he promises. Hitler had the same gift, as have many great leaders.

The crucial difference is the use to which such power is put. The idea that liberals should be frightened of or reactionary toward such comparisons is ludicrous.

Nuggets From the Slop Bucket

Let's see, what happened in the blogosphere while I was away?

Kenneth Anderson reported on robot spiders, soon to be gathering intelligence on the battlefield. Though, his post seems to take for granted BAE Systems' line that they will "save thousands of lives." Gather countless bits of intel, perhaps, but whether lives are saved or lost as a result is in the hands of weapons-bearers and state-makers.

Nicholas Gevosdev at the Washington Realist suggested that R2P doctrine might be applied only to nondemocracies, as a way of gaining support from Southern democracies like South Africa and India. Commenters seem skeptical the idea would sell, but give little consideration to whether it's ethically preferable.

According to Daniel Graeber, the USG has rejected Omar Khadr's defense that he was a child soldier when he tossed a grenade at a US soldier in a firefight. A shame and an outrage, but I wonder if his defense hasn't missed the boat by focusing on Khadr's age. The USG wants to try him for murder, but he was in a firefight. Hello.

And Dan Drezner writes admiringly, and erringly, of Hillary's stick-to-it-ness:

"her performance over the past few months has managed to shift perceptions about her in ways that salvage her reputation as a politician of national standing."

This is nonsense on stilts. Her refusal to drop out of the race has been widely interpreted (falsely in my view) as hurting her party. Her seemingly self-serving intransigence against all reason has recalled the worst of bull-headedness in recent Presidents. That voters now value reason over cowboy antics as a result of the failures of the Bush presidency is the evident in this week's primary results and will become blindingly obvious in November.

Change I Can Believe In

One of the reasons that Barack Obama is well-situated to kick John McCain's ass this Fall is that he has the most comprehensive vision for combatting climate change - truly the issue today that has the potential to unite the right, left and independents.

McCain would refuse to join a global climate change regime without India and China. Clinton talks vaguely about leading such a regime, but with her hawkish foreign policy would likely bankrupt the US in a war with Iran before she's invest seriously in climate change. Obama would put the money McCain wants to use for Mars exploration toward investment in green technology. As he puts it, "If we can go to the moon, we can replace the internal combustion engine. If we can go to the moon, we can build windmills and solar panels."

Even if this is idealistic rhetoric, it is rhetoric that will resonate with vast bipartisan swaths of the electorate this Fall - more than a Mars mission, and certainly more than obliterating innocent civilians in Iranian cities.

To compare the candidates on international law issues, click here.

Are We Bitter? Yes We Are.

At 8:54 pm ABCNews put the URL for its website on the TV screen for the Philadelphia Democratic Debate, and by 8:57 there were 2152 comments. Most of them looked something like this:

"Stop asking #### stupid questions. We are not morons out here. could we please discuss REAL ISSUES. This debate is ridiculous, the next thing they will ask is why Obama used a bad word when he was in third grade. this is why I hate network news, the talking heads believe we are all as stupid as the flag pin lady.

"Like many others, I want to express my outrage at the ridiculous questions being posed. I can't believe George asked Barack if he thinks his pastor loves this country as much as he does. We might as well get Rush Limbaugh to be moderator."

"WAKE UP...TALK ABOUT ISSUES, NOT THE STUFF THAT THE MEDIA HAS DISCUSSED FOR WEEKS....WE ARE SMARTER THAN THAT!!!"

Are any of these media gurus aware that the country is actually at war? Our media is shamelessly out of touch. The ENTIRE WORLD IS WATCHING US EMBARRASS OURSELVES.

Love Is In The Air

This says it all.

It took a lot of guts to make this speech.

"That is Foolish."

Peter Suderman at Bloggingheads thinks John McCain is too much like Lieutenant Worf to be President.

Huh? John McCain, who falls asleep on the job, loves to mix politics and pleasure (with Earth females), likes to make fun of suicide bombers, and can't make up his mind whether the war in Iraq is a piece of cake or requires us to stay for another 100 years, is a lot like this fella?



McCain like loyal, trustworthy, steadfast, sensible, honorable, humorless Worf? I'm happy McCain won the nomination, but Suderman must simply be off his onion.

Leon Klinghoffer Was Not Killed By "Islamo-Fascists"

So the Republican candidates degenerated into an undignified squabble tonight during the NH debate, in which they argued over whether al-Qaeda’s strategy is a reaction to American foreign policy or a logical consequence of Islamic jihadist ideology. (It couldn’t possibly be both.)

Participants drew on some rather strange supporting examples, including Giuliani who threw out Leon Klinghoffer’s name in a long list of Americans who supposedly fell victim to Islamic jihadism since the 60s. His reference of course is to the 69-year-old Jewish disabled tourist singled out for execution by Palestinian terrorists who hijacked the cruise ship Achille Lauro in 1985.

It would be unfortunate if voters accepted Giuliani's interpretation of events, since this example not only doesn’t work for his argument (since the crucial aspects of US foreign policy to which al-Qaeda is said to be a reaction predate the 80s anyway) but contains a serious factual distortion. The Palestinian militants who hijacked the Achille Lauro were nationalists, not jihadists.

Nationalist terrorists use methods such as hostage-taking and suicide attacks against a regime from whom they are seeking independence, or against third parties whose attention they are hoping to attract to their cause. There are many such movements, including the Irish Republican Army, the ETA in Spain, and the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka; many of the world's nationalist terrorist groups happen to be or to have been Muslim-majority, such as the former KLA in Kosovo, the Chechen rebels in Russia in the early 1990s, and the former Palestinian Liberation Organiazation. Such groups have specific territorial and political ambitions and use terrorism strategically to achieve these aims; many have no intention of creating an Islamic state upon victory. They differ markedly from salafi jihadists who are as interested in sowing global disorder to bring about an Islamic caliphate according to some millennial ideal - or, perhaps, simply to get into paradise.

This is a pretty important distinction for a commander in chief to understand, particularly if he’s preparing to set forth a political agenda that includes “keeping the US on the offensive in the war against Islamofascim” as your defining “principle.” (This was in response to a video question by President Bush.) Giuliani, for one, doesn’t know the difference between a jihadist and a nationalist willing to use terrorist methods who also just happens to be Muslim.

Then again, none of the other candidates called him on it, so…